The Guilt of Knowing You Killed the Woman You didn't Know You Loved
by scorpion22
Summary: Told from the Joker's point of view. What if Harley Quinn hadn't made it out of the car that night. What if Batman didn't even bother to save her. Read and find out.


I own nothing.

Joker's POV…

"Puddin'…I can't swim" those are the last words she said to me before our car plunged into the water and I left her there, though I hadn't planned on it being the last time I would ever see her.

"The Batman…the source of good in Gotham" he was supposed to save her, lock her in jail, and then I could save her from that; it didn't work out that way. The Bat didn't save her, maybe because in that warped mind of his, he thought she wasn't worthy to be saved, but in the end, Harley Quinn was left alone. When Johnny Frost, my ever-loyal henchman, entered the dark room where I waited, I knew. There was this feeling in my gut that told me the news before it could leave his lips and I knew. She was gone, and I was helpless to do anything about it. At first, I couldn't look at him or I tried not to. I just sat my eyes downcast imbedding themselves into the carpet until I knew I had to look at him. I couldn't draw this out anymore, somehow, I knew it would only make it worse. When I did, Frost didn't need to shake his head or say the words, I already knew, and yet part of me still hoped I was wrong.

Until those things actually came and I knew I wasn't.

"I'm sorry, Boss…the Bat…he let her drown. She's dead" Frost's words sounded slow to my ears, so much so that they nearly didn't register. I sat there, I could feel my gun in my hand, I wanted to fire at him, kill him for daring to say it, and make it real. Somehow though, for the first time that I could remember, I didn't have the strength or the will. The gun felt like something attached to my hand, something I couldn't use, or I couldn't in that moment. The news of her death changed everything. The room seemed to be cast in shadow, I was cast in shadow, and the color that had always surrounded me seemed to have evaporated. She was that color and without her, it was ceasing to exist.

"Where?" I couldn't finish the sentence as my voice rasped with emotion. I could only avoid Frost's gaze trying to hide that emotion. No one had ever seen that side of me. The side that was still me, still human or somewhat human. Only she had dared to see me, to see the man beneath the laughter.

"They took her body to the morgue" Frost said it simply like it was a fact that I should have figured out for myself as he sat on the steps now waiting like the lackey he was for his orders. As I considered his words though, I couldn't find my own as I sat in the gloom wanting it to take me. To snatch me up and devour what was left of me. I couldn't speak, my emotions, the ones she had resurrected in me were trying too hard to burst onto the surface.

"That's your lady, J…that's right…she was my girl" the thought and memory clung to each other as I tried to get my emotions under control. The gun in my hand had felt heavy before, but it only seemed to get heavier. It was like my emotions were making it that way especially as I remembered my lady, my queen, as she had been the last time I saw her. Dancing, smiling that joyous smile that only seemed to fit her face; she had been my perfect counterpart and I hadn't realized it until we were parted.

That heaviness was giving me ideas. I was picturing them in my mind. Ideas of raising my own gun to my own head and finding the energy to pull that trigger. I could do it. I could take aim and pull the trigger, but not yet. I had something else to do first. I had to do right by her.

"Get the car" my eyes pointed to the sky as I laid on the ground.

"I won't leave her with them" the words barely registered as I heard him leave to do as he was told leaving me to my mournful contemplation. Harley Quinn was in the ceiling, in the air above me. I could see her face with that smile, those eyes on me, always watching, and protecting me in her womanly way. She was there and yet, she wasn't. She was gone, I knew that, and that was why I had to go get her. I wouldn't let them leave her to rot in some grave without even a name or anyone to miss her. I would give her what she deserved and maybe, try to make up for leaving her in that car in the first place. I looked into those eyes as they floated in the air above me that same transfixed feeling falling over me. I wondered if she was really there, above my head, in heaven or if her love for me, her very involvement with me had dragged her down to hell. The thought broke the emotions inside of me free and with a yell, I covered my eyes before the tears could smear across my face.

Sooner then I could have liked, Frost's voice sounded through the door.

"Car's ready, boss" the words seemed to spur something inside me. I didn't register anything that day. Not even the steps that led me out of that room and took me into the van that would take me to her. My mind was at a standstill and its only focus on that day, was her. As the van began to move, Frost and I sat in the back, I didn't know where the other guys were nor, did I care. We sat in silence the way I preferred it. Everything about that day held a heavy gloom and no words were going to lift it. I could feel him watching me, somehow, I knew he wanted to say something, but I wasn't ready for it.

I was keenly aware of where we were going. I knew what to expect when the van stopped, and I stepped out of it. I was going to her. To steal my queens' body from the morgue. I was going to find her on a silver slab in a morgue. She would be cold and stiff and blue with death. I didn't want to picture her that way. I couldn't picture her that way. It felt wrong, not her, with her joy. Her vivacious soul that I knew I wouldn't find when I came upon her. I had killed that soul. I wanted to deny it, but my mind couldn't wrap itself around the idea of her being dead let alone the idea that I had had a hand in it. My memory of her just kept bouncing around from the blonde bombshell hiding behind a pair of doctor's glasses, to the spitfire willing to jump into a vat of acid, but most of all, I remembered her as my queen.

"Puddin'" I heard her voice like a whisper in my mind as we drove helping me to picture her as I remembered her in her joy her body moving in its rhythm with mine the way it always could. The way she moved, her body a work of art, always moving to match me, our touch perfectly in sync with each other; until she stumbled into my world I'd never known that before.

Her voice remained in my head its lilting tone almost singing to me. She kept calling me puddin' just as she had done since we'd met. I had hated it back then, but as time passed I ceased to care. I even grew to like it. It, like her, grew on me until I was loath to let it go; just as I was loath to let her go now. I never had to tell her how I felt. I never did because the truth was I didn't know. I still didn't know even as the van moved with me inside it. I didn't know if I ever would know.

"My heart scares you, but a gun doesn't" her words described it so perfectly as they echoed through my mind the question of how I felt for her still unanswered in my mind only one thing seemed to be clear. I missed her already.

"We're here, boss" Frost's words startled me out of my revelry as the van came to a stop and I didn't wait; I stepped out of the van and shot the first guard I saw.

I could hear the guys footsteps behind me, but they were just a sound.

"I'm here for ya, honey" the thought passed through my mind as I walked through the halls of the Gotham morgue in search of her. With a sound that I barely heard, I stepped through a pair of double doors that led me to where I didn't want to be. I could hear gunshots echoing behind me as the guys took care of the rest of the guards and raising my own gun I pointed it at the coroner. He had the answers I needed. Each step I took then was decided before I knew it and backing him into a corner, I put the gun right to his head. Touching it right to his head, I looked this man dead in the eye, and then I looked at the freezers; she was in one of them. He knew where she was and looking at him again, he was going to tell me.

"Which one is she in?" I sounded like an animal as I said it the words a menacing growl that resulted in me jamming the gun violently into the man's head.

"Who?" The man didn't talk fast enough. He wasn't giving me the answers I wanted. I didn't fire my gun, instead, I beat him with the butt of the gun until his blood covered it. When he was on the ground, I lifted him by the throat looking him in the eye as I repeated my question.

"Where is she?"

"Who?"

Slamming the man into the wall, I cocked my gun my patience all, but gone.

"Harley Quinn?" her name still rolled so naturally off my tongue. I could almost hear her calling to me from one of those freezers. She was asking me to rescue her and this guy was keeping me from doing so. A silence fell until watching his eyes, I followed them to the freezer at the end of the wall, and I knew. That's where she was. Harley was locked away in that freezer, dead, never again to grace me with her overwhelming presence. I knew where she was and stepped towards the freezer, I had to get her out of there. Letting the man go, I approached the freezer, and opening it, the first thing I saw was the top of her blond head.

"Harley" I didn't even realize it as her name left my mouth as I gained the courage to pull her out the coroner moving behind me to leave. I didn't register the movement it took to raise my arm and shoot him. I only remember a thud then metal on metal as I pulled her out.

"What'd they do to you" the thought seemed to make it real as I looked at her, she didn't even look like herself, but like a cold rendition of the Harley Quinn I'd known who had danced so vividly into the spotlight of my heart. She looked like a drowned rat.

Her hair was a nest of chaos, her skin was nearly pale blue, and I knew she was dead. She didn't look like she was sleeping as I'd heard; she looked dead. I touched her hand. It was cold. I don't know how long I stood there with only her hand in mine until Frost stepped into the room.

"Boss…we gotta go…the last thing we need is the Bat showing up." I nodded.

"Go find something to put her in…I'm not leaving her this time" and once he was gone, I started to clean her up. Brushing the hair out of her face, I wanted her eyes to suddenly open, but she remained a corpse on a slab. Drawing a breath that seemed to stick in my lungs, I brought my lips to kiss her forehead; she was cold there too.

"Come on, baby…let's go home," Frost entered again, a coroner's body bag on a metal table with wheels being pulled along with him. He didn't say anything, neither did I, instead, I picked her cold body up off the slab, and carrying her to the bag, Frost and I put her in it. As we zipped it, it felt wrong somehow.


End file.
